Promise
by CalliopeMused
Summary: Kitty remembers old promises. So does Bartimaeus. [Oneshot] Spoilers for Ptolemy's Gate.


_The events of this story follow The Only Good Magician, a separate oneshot. While some dialogue or narration may mention events from that story, reading it is not required to understand this. Jonathon Stroud still owns Bartimaeus, Kitty, and all mentioned characters._

**Dead Magician Walking**  
As she dug a stub of chalk from the bottom of a neglected valise, she began the long process of bringing back a memory. Some things would never come back, but she couldn't have forgotten this. It had changed so much, with so little in the way of cost.

Magicians didn't spread far just how little was actually required in the summoning of a demon. She knew the spells, by rote if not by heart, and could mutter through the appropriate phrases under her breath as she drew the edges of a pentagon. It was smaller than most magicians felt proper, but she was working from a small room and needed room for her circle. Her circle was larger, but that was because she wouldn't be able to stay standing throughout the ritual.

She knew that her legs would never support such an endeavor, so she had considered all parts of the spell. Nothing had ever said that the summoning magician had to stay standing. She was allowed to be unconventional. She was the first commoner known in recent times to summon a demon, after all- even if it had been luck, back then. It had been fortune back when things were changing. Back before the rest of the pitiful Resistance had died, before she had ever let a scared kid with a mouler glass live, before she and Jakob had encountered the Black Tumbler- she still hadn't been happy.

Now, across an ocean and surrounded by people enamored with their recent freedom, she felt no excitement in hearing the daily reports sent by the committee writing something they were calling a Constitution. What were words? How could mere words guarantee rights, and give someone a fair chance in court against someone as powerful as a magician? How could they be a free country when the men writing the document were subject to the same flaws that limited everyone?

There weren't easy answers. She wished that there were, if only to make matters a little simpler. What did it matter, one more broken promise? Jakob had understood too well. He wanted more than she did- so she had left. She had left everything that should have made her unhappy behind, and it hadn't worked. Here she was, after reading a letter, doing something that she had vowed to never do again.

What did her word matter? It had only been a promise to herself.

She adjusted her spectacles on her eyes, blinking as the field of vision shifted. It was all well and good that she knew the man who had invented bifocals, but they had not been made for close examination of chalk diagrams. She surveyed the diagram, then closed herself inside her circle and brushed the chalk from her hands.

She read the spell from a book, slow but sure as she remembered the foreign words that had once been as natural as breathing. She had practiced, and had recited the words until each syllable was firm on her tongue- and now was far older than she should be. It didn't matter, that she was older now- she had no reason to dally for too long. Sometimes, living seemed a lot of fuss- but there was no alternative, really. As long as she spent her days wondering if she should go home, it was like nothing needed to change.

The only certain word in the spell was the name. That she could say loudly, firmly, and with precise enunciation, just as the book suggested.

She watched, eyes narrowed, and waited. She should have known, that he would take his time. She had read the magician's book entirely, this time, and hadn't just found the needed spell. Unfamiliar spells ran through her mind, and she wondered at the creativity of magicians. Who could create such things?

She didn't expect an Egyptian boy to appear in the pentacle. Her surprise may or may not have shown, but he had to make a comment. She knew he would when she had summoned him. She just didn't know why she had that hecould change anything.

"We're back to this, Kitty?" he asked, disapprovingly looking over the pentacle.

"Other alternatives did not work out well. Why should we go back to that?" Kitty tried to make her words a weapon, but he didn't give a reaction. She should have known.

"As I recall, the last time you trusted me, we just might have saved the continent, maybe the world. We definitely saved London."

"I trusted you, and you lied to me." She didn't try to keep her voice flat, but it remained just that. She was too tired to be properly vehement. "So did he."

"From what I know of your ridiculous language, antecedents are wonderful things- unless a magician is issuing a command. In commands, pronouns give a bit of leeway."

"You know who I'm talking about, Bartimaeus."

"I know that you're seated in a nice chair and I'm in a downsized pentacle. If you're not in the mood for elaboration, you can dismiss me, and then all you'll miss is a message."

"A message?"

"A message," he confirmed. "Did anyone ever figure out what happened, at the end of the business with Nouda?"

"He died. I thought you had died, too- I had an open summons for a month, and you never came."

"Kitty, an open summons is usually a trap used by high-level magicians, or a desperate act by an amateur. Unless it has my name on it, I don't go near those.

"As for the end of that business, the kid told me that I would manage to 'cock things up.' So, he took the obvious solution. He dismissed me, just like that- just one last message."

She knew he would do it. She had known that Bartimaeus would make that change since she summoned him- and it still surprised her. It still hurt. She hadn't even liked the boy who had looked like that- not really. She had started to tolerate him, and it wasn't nearly enough that it should make her think of crying to just see him.

"Say hello to Kitty for me."

With that, he was Ptolemy again- but she couldn't trust him. She just couldn't.

"You think he wanted to leave? We both know that Nathaniel would rather have had all the glory that went with such a feat. I thought we both would go down together, but he saved me."

"You should have saved him! You always brag about what you've done- after all that, you couldn't keep one arrogant presumptuous magician alive?" Her voice trailed again into complete flatness.

"Kitty, he dismissed me. Nothing I could do- dismissals were created so that a djinni or whatever was summoned can't do something on the way out. He liked you- accept that, would you? The kid liked you and he's dead." He paused, recognizing a few syllables that Kitty was muttering under her breath. "Kitty, I know it's blunt, but you summoned me." He shifted in the pentacle, and heard a few words that never meant well. "Katherine!"

The spell split. He could have turned it on her, but she was crying. She had been crying since he said her name- he hadn't done it because she was Kitty, even when she was saying the incantation for the Stimulating Compass. The Egyptian boy's breathing was completely even, unlike hers. He watched her crying, wondering if any magician had ever done that before.

"I'm sorry," she said, her voice small. She felt all the years, and wondered if it could have been different. She never should have went with Bartimaeus. "I thought that I was ready to hear about him, but I'm not. I'm just not. Maybe I'll go back to London first, and talk to Jakob- see the statue that was commissioned before I left. I'll only make one more summons, when I'm ready- if I even need to."

"Will you trust me, next time?"

She looked in her spellbook, not reading the words on the page. She remembered the notice in the front, written in heavy type. Demons were not to be trusted. Bartimaeus was a djinni- that was just as bad. "I don't know if I can, after last time, but I'll try." She would promise nothing more.

"Kitty." He said her name so seriously that she looked up from the dismissal spell.

He scuffed at the pentacle with a bare foot. The chalk smeared on the sanded wood floor. For a moment, she thought he would prove the book's warning right- but he only said one thing before disappearing without a single affectation. "Next time, you might want to draw a pentacle an imp couldn't break."


End file.
